Protestant Churches and Same-Sex Marriage in France: ”Theological” Criteria and Sociological Approaches Gwendoline Malogne-Fer To cite this version: Gwendoline Malogne-Fer. Protestant Churches and Same-Sex Marriage in France: ”Theological” Criteria and Sociological Approaches. in Véronique ALTGLAS et Matthew WOOD (dir.), Bringing Back the Social Into the Study of Religion, Leiden, Brill, pp.35-58, 2018. halshs-02974401 HAL Id: halshs-02974401 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02974401 Submitted on 21 Oct 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Gwendoline Malogne-Fer, 2018. « Protestant Churches and same sex Marriage : "theological" criteria and sociological approach », in Véronique ALTGLAS et Matthew WOOD (dir.), Bringing Back the Social Into the Study of Religion, Leiden, Brill, pp. 35-58. Chapter 1 Protestant Churches and Same-Sex Marriage in France: “Theological” Criteria and Sociological Approaches Gwendoline Malogne-Fer Introduction The reflection presented here was born from my personal questions about the academic study of religion, including the place of non-believer scientists in the field of the French sociology of religion and the potential influence of researchers’ religious beliefs and belonging on sociological analyses. My own research on Polynesian Protestantism questions the relevance of the classical academic boundary between sociology and anthropology. The grand partage of the earth into distinct “cultural areas” (Lenclud, 1992) still prompts researchers studying non- western societies to adopt an anthropological approach. Anthropology has historically focused on non-Christian religions, with Christianity assigned to sociology, at least until the more recent development of an anthropology of Christianity (Coleman and Hackett, 2015; Robbins, 2004). Yet for me and for many other researchers of my generation who received no religious education, Protestantism is as “exotic” as a non-Christian religion. The advice given me by my first thesis supervisor, an anthropologist, was to “look beneath the Christian varnish” to discover the true Polynesian culture and beliefs; to me this was difficult to apply, as it implied a “true Christianity” with which I lacked familiarity. In addition, such an unveiling would be difficult in Tahiti and its neighbouring islands, as Christianity has been present since the end of the 18th century. I turned to the sociology of religion, but ended up facing new difficulties related to the eurocentric nature of many paradigmatic concepts that have Gwendoline Malogne-Fer, 2018. « Protestant Churches and same sex Marriage : "theological" criteria and sociological approach », in Véronique ALTGLAS et Matthew WOOD (dir.), Bringing Back the Social Into the Study of Religion, Leiden, Brill, pp. 35-58. contributed to the distinctive identity of this discipline in France since the 1960– 70s, notably, the theory of secularisation and the concept of religious modernity and its various reformulations, such as ultra-modernity, advanced modernity, or late modernity (for a critical analysis, see Obadia, 2014). I also had methodological and epistemological issues with the use of concepts with Christian origins, which can be understood in both a secular and a religious sense and owe part of their success to their polysemy. [page 36] My argument here is that the sociology of religion in France is not simply a branch of sociology, but a discipline whose specificity is continually reinforced by academics who advocate the irreducible distinctiveness of the “religious” object. Even if the diversity of theoretical approaches represents an intellectual richness conducive to debate, the risk is that the alleged specificity of the religious object ultimately means that an irreducible part of religion will always elude the scope of sociological analysis. This chapter draws on the confrontational debates triggered in 2012–2013 by the “marriage for all” bill (same-sex marriage) and considers the way these debates were analysed from a Protestant and a sociological point of view. The debates revealed tensions within French society, as well as within the sociology of religion, more specifically, the sociology of Christianity. Although I focus on two articles by Jean-Paul Willaime, the following reflection should not be read as a critique of the work of this eminent sociologist of Protestantism; in fact, his insights furthered my own doctoral research on women’s accession to the pastorate and the professionalisation of this ministry. Rather, my objective is to draw on a case I previously studied1 to highlight the divergent approaches coexisting in the sociology of religion. To understand what was at stake in the debate on same-sex marriage and the commitments of actors in both academic and religious fields, we need to review the Gwendoline Malogne-Fer, 2018. « Protestant Churches and same sex Marriage : "theological" criteria and sociological approach », in Véronique ALTGLAS et Matthew WOOD (dir.), Bringing Back the Social Into the Study of Religion, Leiden, Brill, pp. 35-58. chronology of events and the stances of the various Christian churches on the issue. The notion of “field” elaborated by Bourdieu is particularly relevant to understand the relationships of power and the strategies involved in the positions adopted by religious, political, and academic actors (Obadia, 2014: 299–300; also Bourdieu, 1971). The debate on the “marriage for all” bill highlighted a convergence of views on this kind of issue by Protestant and Catholic churches. At the beginning of the 2000s, Willaime noted the significant convergence of Protestants and Catholics in matters of sexual ethics (Willaime, 2002) during the debate on same-sex civil union (civil solidarity pact, pacs). This convergence contrasted sharply with the context of the 1970s, when Catholic and Protestant churches showed strong divergences. There were also clear divergences at the time within the various Protestant faiths: the Lutheran-Reformed churches, dominant in the French Protestant Federation, argued in favour of contraception, decriminalisation of abortion, and recognition of divorce, while Evangelicals 1 In a presentation with V. Aubourg at the Congress of the French Sociology Association (2013) and in a recent publication (Malogne-Fer, 2017), I explained the use of social sciences by Catholic and Protestant churches in the debate on same- sex marriage. [page 37] were more conservative. Despite the more recent move towards convergence, many in religious and academic fields still see this as an unbridgeable gap. This chapter explains the evolution of Protestant churches’ positions on same-sex marriage and seeks to shed light on the convergence of views, on the one hand, between Catholic and Protestant churches and, on the other hand, between the different Protestant streams. It questions the relevance of a strict distinction between Lutheran-Reformed Protestants and Evangelicals as a sociological key to analysing Protestant attitudes towards same-sex marriage. It shows why intra- Gwendoline Malogne-Fer, 2018. « Protestant Churches and same sex Marriage : "theological" criteria and sociological approach », in Véronique ALTGLAS et Matthew WOOD (dir.), Bringing Back the Social Into the Study of Religion, Leiden, Brill, pp. 35-58. Protestant “theological” criteria do not provide a sufficient sociological explanation: there is a risk of reproducing theological criteria as they are elaborated in the Protestant field without examining the social and institutional stakes of these distinctions. Finally, the chapter turns to a controversy between two major sociologists of religion during the debate on same- sex marriage to illustrate the tensions generated by an incomplete process of secularisation of the sociology of religion in France. Protestant Stances on the “Marriage for All” Bill French Protestant churches have two different federations. The French Protestant Federation (FPF), established in 1905, includes churches from all denominational backgrounds, but its leaders are mainly Reformed and Lutheran ministers. Its mission is to represent French Protestantism and Protestant ac- tors to state authorities. Since 2010, the FPF has faced competition from the Conseil National des Évangéliques de France (Cnef), which has a doctrinal basis and attracts approximately 70 percent of Evangelicals in France.2 Both federations took stances on the bill; even though their arguments differed, their official statements show both federations – as well as numerous Protestant churches – were against same- sex marriage. On 13 September 2012, the Cnef and the Assemblies of God (the main Pentecostal denomination within the Cnef) released two quite different statements on same-sex marriage. The Cnef’s statement begins with a reminder that its position rests on biblical ethics but goes on to make a different type of argument: it notes the need for a large and democratic debate and cites the difference between men and women which “has always been a fundamental fact of anthropology,”